Post navigation

Notes from a Holy Priest Learning 2 Druid Heal

OK, I’ve been healing heroics with my druid alt and it’s very different than healing with a holy priest. Seriously. The hardest part is overcoming muscle memory to reach for certain spells that do not exist (that’s right, I totally have fewer keybinds). So, in no particular order…

No Spammable AOE? How do I heal up the group?

As a Holy Priest, I first hit Circle of Healing and if that still wasn’t enough, Prayer of Healing.

As a Druid, I hit wild growth and it’s on cooldown and now what do I dooooooo?

A little damage: Single target heals or hots. Sprinkle. Or, if you’re not expecting more damage, wait until Wild Growth comes off cooldown and hit it again

A lot of damage: TRANQUILITY. OR if Tranq is on cooldown, Tree and sprinkle Lifeblooms (cheap)

Cooldowns. Use them.

I have to remember, and I frequently do not, that Tranq is on a 3 minute cooldown. Tree of life is on a 3 minute cooldown. It’s not like Divine Hymn that is only up for a srs bzns emergency. Tree and Tranq are meant to be used EVERY BOSS FIGHT, more than once. (This is really hard to internalize…)

Rolling Lifeblooms

Ugh, this is like what I suck at for Shadow – refreshing dots/hots before they expire. Lifebloom gets refreshed by another lifebloom (duh) or a direct heal. Direct heals have a cast time. Sometimes I time it right and the direct heal lands before the lifebloom expires. Sometimes… it does not. Crap.

Innervate is not stupid like Shadowfiend

Hooray! If I cast innervate on myself, it will actually just cast on myself and restore mana. It won’t wander off into the corner of the room and examine its shadowy tentacles like my obtuse Shadowfiend. (I’ve macroed the fiend to attack, but sometimes it disobeys.)

Why is my healing floor way over there?

Since I suck at figuring out who is where, I don’t want to swiftmend a ranged dps and drop a healing floor where nobody can use it. Targeting circle, where art thou? Right now I’m swiftmending the tank and if a ranged dps is hurting, it’s regrowth. Or the ranged dies. That works too.

I have a battle rez

Something I totally forget. I even glyphed it. Self, you can salvage this encounter. Which I forget until the death of one person leads to the death of another in a downward spiral of fail. I could have nipped it in the bud with the first death. Now it’s too late.

Harmony is Easysauce

Oh noes, I have to direct heal once every 10 seconds. As a priest, it would be inconceivable that I would spend a 10 second interval without throwing a single direct heal. I made a power aura, but this is pretty much automatic for me and I don’t have to give it much thought.

When mobs bite my face off…

I have aggro and don’t have fade. Barkskin? Entangling roots and run like hell? Hope the tank isn’t bad.

I must say, since I started raiding on a priest in Cata, the lack of an aggro drop on my druid has become painful. I’ve always generated huge aggro and make mobs want to chew my face off, but after seeing the beautiful simplicity that is Fade, I feel like my druid is really missing out. Barkskin is nice, but it generally won’t save you from adds directly attacking you a couple times. Sometimes people try to tell me to switch to cat form and cower to drop threat. hahaha…not quite as easy as it sounds (especially when you have more than one thing gunning for you).

Heh, it’s similar to going from priest to shaman. Shamans have like 6 spells (not counting totems because they’re mostly just a 1-per fight thing), and I have my suspicions that Blizzard did this so that we’d have enough spare mental capacity to look around and figure out who best to cast chain heal on. As opposed to panicking and casting it on whoever has the lowest health only to discover it’s the hunter standing three miles away from everyone else.

The aggro thing is a pain too – you have Wind Shear, which drops aggro by 10% nothing at all, so in emergencies you basically have Earthbind-Totem-and-run, or possibly Earth-Elemental-and-pray. Stoneclaw Totem is supposed to taunt mobs or something, but in my experience they just laugh at it and then beat me up.

If you use Swiftmend on a melee it’ll probably be where you want. I have Vuhdo set up to show class colors so it’s really pretty mindless; warrior, rogue, dk colors = Swiftmend fodder. Tanks = SW fodder. Pally might be SW’able, depending if it’s our Ret or Holy pally. And the Holy Pally stands in melee often enough…

I find that I pretty much use Nourish OR Healing Touch but not both. If I need mana, I use Nourish, otherwise HT.

I have Rebirth set to go off if I right click a dead person on my healing frames. Makes it a bit easier to remember. If they’re alive, it’s a Rejuv, if not, it’s a Rebirth.

Swiftmend is on a ridiculously short CD. Use it on whoever to keep them alive. If more than 1 person is in the Efflo, good If not…who cares.

When you get aggro. DONT PANIC. Hit barkskin, put a rejuv on yourself (to be ready to swiftmend if case you’re gonna die) and RUN TO THE TANK. The tank regular rotation should be enough to grab aggro away from you.

Also, you forgot Nature’s swiftness. It’s not great but it can be useful when someone is real low health.

I was actually gonna make a post just like this one! I’ve been a Priest all through my WoW adventures, but have recently made the decision to roll a Resto Druid for our 25 man team. Why? We have 5 priests total with only 1 other Druid and a Shaman. It’s a bit overkill and we want some more versatility.

As you said, it is COMPLETELY different from Priest healing. Druids really don’t have any type of “burst” healing capability and must rely on smart HoTs to make it through encounters. The best part tho? Tranquility actually moves health bars, whereas Divine Hymn is pretty pathetic in comparison, AND its on a shorter cd!

I’m really working on making a Power Aura for the Harmony buff. I seem to get tunnel visioned on HoTs and I’m forgetting to use my direct heals for the Mastery buff.

I raided in a 25 man last night and I found that using Swiftmend on myself to kinda “target” where the AoE will go seems to work better than targeting a random raid member, at least for the ranged and healers. Many times when I SM the tank, the enemy’s hit box is so large that it still doesn’t properly hit the rest of the melee, which is unfortunate. Efflorescence was my #3 heal from last night. It is SO much better than HW:Sanct.